Friday, December 18, 2009

Suppose I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me", you say, and I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle - but no dragon

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints. "Good idea", I say, "but this dragon floats in the air". Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire. "Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless", I say. You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible. "Good idea, except she's an incorporeal (bodyless) dragon and the paint won't stick!"

And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now what is the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? You're inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.

But then I say, "Well, that's because the dragon is made of Dark Matter." And then you walk away satisfied that there really is a dragon in my garage, because apparently, scientists nowadays will believe anything, as long as it's told to them by other scientists. Witness Climategate."

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Today I ran across an SUV with a bunch of lefty bumper-stickers, which in itself is pretty funny, but, in addition to the usual Obama campaign stickers and the “I’m already against the next war” BS, there was this gem: “Minds are like parachutes, they only function when open.”It’s always so hilarious when I see some lefty talking about the importance of having an open mind, because they’re usually some of the most closed minded people you’ll ever meet. Every time I hear a lefty use the phrase “Keep an open mind”, it’s always in the advancement of their own beliefs. I’ve yet to see a hard core lib keep an open mind when confronted by ideas that conflict with their own beliefs. In their world, open-minded means liberal, and closed-minded means conservative.Adding to this, they don’t seem to understand that there are times when it’s appropriate to have an open mind, and times when it’s not. Being open minded is fine when you’re approaching a question for the first time. It allows you to gather as much information as possible before you make a decision. At some point, though, you do have to make a decision, and at that point, your mind is no longer open on the issue. You’ve decided. You’ve weighed all the evidence, and come to a conclusion that fits with what you know about the universe around you. That’s not a bad thing. Unfortunately, if the decision you’ve come to doesn’t match the lefty world view, you’re viewed as closed-minded, in a negative sense, as if you’ve just made a knee-jerk reaction without thinking things through. Their underlying assumption seems to be that anyone who gives their ideas a fair hearing will automatically see the superiority of their beliefs and convert to them, post haste. They simply can’t seem to understand that people of good conscience can come to different conclusions about the same problem in good faith. It’s like they know that THEY’RE trying to do the right thing, therefore, anyone who disagrees with them must have more sinister motivations. They seem to have developed a very simplistic us=good, everyone else=bad belief system.Didn’t they criticize President Bush as having a Manichean view of good and evil? Is that an example of irony, or just projection?

Friday, October 30, 2009

So I want to address this issue of vegetarianism more fully. It seems with liberals in general, and vegetarians in particular, there is this myth that mankind evolved as hunter-gatherers, with the extreme emphasis on gathering. That eating meat is some sort of aberration that mankind started in order to get through tougher times, and that if we all just went back to eating vegetarian, we’d all be healthy, happy, and strong, and the world would be a better place, and there’d be rainbows and unicorns or something. Unfortunately for them, we are not herbivores, and any cursory glance at our anatomy and that of other species will tell you that.

First, if you look at the skull of a herbivore, you will notice that the eye sockets (and hence the eyes) are located toward the sides of the skull, giving a herbivore a sort of “wall-eyed” look. Think of rabbits and deer, for example. There is a very good reason for this: herbivores are prey. They need to have as wide a field of vision as possible in order to spot potential predators.

Now, look at the skull of a carnivore. Think cats, or wolves. The eyes are both placed forward on the skull. This is because carnivores are hunters, and they need stereoscopic vision so they can accurately judge distances while hunting.

Now, look at the human skull. Where are the eyes placed? In the front, like a predator’s.

The fact of the matter is that we evolved as hunter-gatherers, but the emphasis was on HUNTING, not gathering. Look at our stomachs. Herbivores tend to have multi-chambered stomachs to better process plant materials. Carnivores have single chambered stomachs designed to digest meat. We have single chamber stomachs. Why? Because we’re meat eaters.

Right now, I’m eating chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and corn. I like corn. I eat corn just about any chance I get. But every time I eat it, or any other vegetable for that matter. I get gas. Sometimes painful gas. Why? Because I have a carnivore’s stomach. Sure, as a human, there are some plants I can eat without too much difficulty. Generally, these are the soft, reproductive parts of the plants, namely the seeds and fruits. We humans don’t eat the bulk of the plant, because we aren’t herbivores. We aren’t vegetarians, no matter how much we may wish to be.

Back in the days of slavery, not just American slavery in the South, but in the days of antiquity, slave owners used to feed their slaves diets high in carbohydrates, but low in proteins. Breads and grains, fruits and vegetables, but no meat. Meat was expensive, you see, but it’s also necessary for protein for building muscle and getting stronger. Slave owners didn’t want their slaves to get stronger, because then they just may develop the strength to resist and escape. So they fed them carbs. That way they’d have just enough energy to do the work that was required of them, but nothing to grow on. Slave food.

Right now, there is an ever growing push by those on the left for us to switch to a more vegetarian way of eating, whether it’s in the name of health, the environment, or whatever stupid fad they’re following this week. These same liberals are the ones who want to take away so many of our freedoms under the guise of safety: they want to disarm us because we may hurt each other with our nasty firearms; they want to control what we say so we don’t hurt each other’s feelings; they want to tell us how much money we can make or have; they want to control what we eat, and tell us what we can’t. The only areas where they want us to have any freedom is in the realm of sex, or maybe drugs. They want to cater to our base animal instincts while curtailing the things that make us better than animals: our free will, our capacity to make choices for ourselves, and our ability say what we think without fear. This vegetarian slave food is just one more piece of the process of turning us all into docile animals. It makes sense, really. When you aspire to be the sheepherder, it helps if all those around you are sheep.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

What the hell is wrong with Natalie Portman? After watching her wooden performances in the new Star Wars trilogy, I would have guessed Dutch Elm Disease. Apparently I was wrong: she’s a pompous blowhard lefty.

And now she’s just converted to veganism, the idiot stepsister to vegetarianism. Which is fine. If she wants to make that choice for herself, whatever. I have no problem with the lifestyle choices of others, as long as they keep them out of my face. Unfortunately, she’s decided to become a Vegan Activist, a category that occupies the lowest rung on the ladder of human existence, along with neo-nazis, 9/11 truthers, furries, and people who dress up like Klingons.

A few years ago, internet super genius Maddox wrote one of the all time great rants about vegetarianism and veganism, where he came up with the idea of “Sponsoring a Vegetarian.”

What does it mean to sponsor a vegetarian? It means that you have to find someone in your life who's a really big pain in everyone's ass every time you want to go out to eat, and then you commit yourself to eating THREE times the amount of meat you'd normally consume to make up for all the meat that your vegetarian buddy isn't eating. It's that simple! That way, you can reverse the guilt trip that they've been laying on us for years by not only neutralizing their cause, but making it actually worse by eating more animals than would have ever been eaten had they not chosen to become vegetarians!

An incredible vicious and evil idea, which is why I like it.

So, anyway, she’s now decided that she’s going to become an activist, spreading the news of the “superiority” of her lifestyle to everyone, and thus become even more of an insufferable ass in the process, which I didn’t even think was possible. (For further reading about just how “superior” her guiltless lifestyle choice is, I offer another Maddox masterpiece: Guiltless Grill.)

So, because her insufferable arrogance and stupidity has managed to set me off during a time when I happened to be looking to be set off about something, I am now officially sponsoring Natalie Portman. I realize that this means nothing in the cosmic scheme of things: I’m an internet nobody, and she’s a world famous actress, carved from the finest maple, but so what. In my own small way, I’m helping to wreck her little BS cause. She may think she’s making some sort of beautiful contribution to gaia, or some such BS; meanwhile, I’m here in the shadows, silently negating everything she’s doing. And then some.